9 tips to improve your Google rankings in 2019

To celebrate our 9th anniversary of being in business here are 9 tips to help you to improve your SEO / Google rankings in 2019:

Firstly consider which keyword phrases you would like your business to be found for and RESEARCH. Keyword phrases are not just for your website! They should be used on your LinkedIn profile, your blogs and your social media posts. We recommend using Google’s Keyword Planner tool.

When it comes to your website, your keywords need to be in the copy of your site and the code behind your site. Content continues to be king and Google likes fresh content which showcases what you do and your areas of expertise. Blogging is a great way to achieve this.

Your site must be mobile friendly to help your Google rankings. Mobile friendly sites have been big news for a while now and of course this will continue to be the case for 2019. Can users click on your telephone number to call you? Is your site interactive? Also consider the end user experience on your website. Start by checking that your website passes Google’s mobile friendly test: search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.

Is your site secure? We also recommend that all sites should be secure (using https rather than http) as Google likes and trusts secure sites. You can arrange this with your hosting company.

Site speed will continue to be an important factor in Google rankings for 2019. In simple terms, pages that load quickly are going to be a must-have in the future, again considering the end user experience on your site. You can check your site speed in Google Analytics.

Consider optimising for voice search. “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020” according to com score. As it becomes the norm for our children to ask Siri and Alexa all varieties of questions, voice search will continue to grow in 2019. So think about providing answers to specific questions, with your business audience in mind. Think about the problem and provide a solution e.g. “How to set up an autoreply on Facebook Messenger”.

Ensure your business is on Google My Business. Every business owner should have a Google My Business listing. It’s free and appears at the top of the page for local search which is amazing for your Google rankings. Google My Business functionality continues to grow on a regular basis and this is one to watch in 2019.

It’s important to ensure your brand is recognised by Google which can be achieved through consistent content. Online branding is a way of promoting your website and its content (including blogs) on various platforms such as social media to gain more audience attraction. Once the audience starts to know more about your brand, if they are able to relate to your website they will share it with their contacts which will help your Google rankings.

Lastly, measure! Ensure you are measuring all of your efforts by making the most of the tracking tools on your social media platforms (e.g. Facebook Insights). Our favourite tracking tool is Google Analytics and this is a must-have for every website owner. Again it is free and only takes a couple of minutes to install on your site.